Mountain pink

If the Maximilian sunflower you saw last time was months early, the mountain pink you’re seeing now was right on schedule when I photographed it on June 7 by the side of Capital of Texas Highway in the hills on the west side of Austin. Those hills are the mountains in the familiar name mountain pink, but there are neither hills nor mountains in the botanical name Centaurium beyrichii. The mound of blossoms and buds in this picture is part—and only part—of the dense floral dome of a single plant; that’s how profusely mountain pink plants can flower.

The photograph I posted on this date last year is relevant to what you’re viewing today: a mountain pink bud with a single opening flower seeming to dance behind it (if looked at with the proper dose of imagination, but not a greater dose than was required for botanists to hark back to the centaurs of Greek mythology when naming this genus of plants).

Though I’m not always able to come up with a comment, please know that coming to your site always brightens my day, I must say. Mom and I have been using our wildflowers at a glance pamphlet. We narrowed down one little gem to a sort of polygonum, but I am charged with going back to check the leaf arrangements to nail it down. Another we can’t find, and we believe the reason is it is an “import” and not natural to the area, though the only place we see it is “in the wild.” I have tried to take photos with flash to capture some for ID, and my flash always fails! I must leave that to the masters (read: Steven Schwartzman).

While these wildflower guides include many common species, they come nowhere close to including them all, so a plant that you encounter in the wild but can’t identify from the guide could be native or alien.

I’m sorry your flash pictures aren’t turning out. Is there someone local you can ask about that, perhaps at a camera store?

I think it’s something I’m doing, not the camera–and what I need to do is spend some time experimenting to figure out what I’m doing wrong. In the meantime, it’s fun to take a closer look, with my guide in hand!

I can’t think of any bud that’s more slender, or that contrasts more with the domed shape of the inflorescence as a whole.

At the place where I took last year’s picture there had been quite a few other mountain pink plants, so I went back this year—and found not a single one. Such is the variability of nature. For whatever reason, this seems to be a poor year for mountain pinks.

I should have added that it isn’t only nature that’s variable. About six years ago I discovered some mountain pinks growing along US 290 in the prairie on the east side of Austin, where they had no right to be. I went back to the site each spring to photograph those pioneer plants, but I can do that anymore: the widening of the highway into a toll road destroyed them all last year.